European Cultural Foundation

Report by Giulia Giapponesi, video artists
University of Visual Arts, Bologna (part of Italian group)

As an Italian artist who participate in the international project Atlante Mediterraneo, I am part of the group of the exchange in which thirty young artists from five different Mediterranean countries have been invited to work together with the same task: having an open discussion about what’s going on in the public space and in the contemporary society.

At our first meeting last autumn in Italy, we basically have been sitting together around a table, trying to know each other. Our daily issues were about how to make a common point on different topics such as:
- What public art is, according to the personal experiences that each one developed in his own country?
- What kind of consideration about the territory is possible to make today?
- Which kinds of artistic actions can we make in the city as results of our considerations?

That was a hard discussion for different reasons. On one hand we had some practical problems: since not everyone could handle the English language at the same level, sometimes different translations were needed and, as a consequence, some subtle concepts used to get lost inside the process of making everybody understand. This problem has not really been a real obstacle because the main considerations has been always worked out clearly; but when we tried to point out some particular aspects of our personal experience I think that few people have really understood all. On the other hand, in my opinion, even when the language is properly understood by everybody, the cultural differences between our countries (especially between the countries on the opposite sides of the Mediterrean Sea), make some concepts not easy to be understood for all the interlocutors.

As one Turkish artist said during our meeting, Atlante Mediterraneo (part of the Going Public Project) is a challange of making global what is local. In his word, to bring thirty artists from all over the Mediterranean countries and make them having such a strong impact on a provincial town this is a “glocalization”. Trying to set a global view on what cannot be global by nature would end in turning what is global into local. I think he meant that it is easier to change the mind of an international artist towards the one of an old citizen of the city than to turn the mind of a local citizen towards the one of an international artist.

Anyway the exchange has many positive aspects. The most visible one is, of course, the cultural aspect of an experience which involve people of both eastern and western culture. This kind of exchange, like the one organized by Gudran Association (Alexandria) at the fishermen’s village in El-Max, where we participated for the Atlante Mediterraneo, really helps all the people involved (which does not mean only the artists but also all the organizers and the citizens touched by the event) to face their own cultural stereotypes and reconsider them. It is a mutual gain in terms of different ways of knowledge, not only of living but also of considering art and making it. That’s why these kind of workshops are such an inspiration for artists, because when one’s mind is open it’s easier to produce something that finds a way to communicate oneself to the others.

As a final consideration I would say that Atlante Mediterraneo is an important experiment. It is definitely an ambitious project and it startes with a great expectation. Probably the high number of participants could not be considered an obstacle from an artistic point of view, but it could be in consideration of an action planned on the territory. Anyway, in my opinion, most of the participants are giving a positive response in particular those that are supposed to have more adaptation difficulties like the Egyptian group. Moreover, some of the artistic productions are really interesting works and they really hit the city.

15th February 2007

Atlante Mediterraneo international workshop, Modena (Italy)